On Tuesday I posted a shout-out to “The Train,” a classic Nazi-art-heist movie (see below). Today I’m linking to the trailer for “Monuments Men,” the upcoming drama about a platoon of Allied art experts who try to rescue masterworks appropriated by the Nazis. Directed by and starring George Clooney (as American conservationist George L. Stout, who went on to run the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston), the film has been been bumped from its planned year-end release to Feb. 7, 2014.

ORIGINAL POST:
The story of a huge cache of lost artworks discovered in Munich recently has prompted questions of provenance, ownership and the legacy of Nazi looting. You can read the AP piece here.

But as a fan of movies, art and John Frankenheimer, I’m reminded of the “The Train,” a 1964 World War II film starring Burt Lancaster as a French railway worker who reluctantly joins an effort to prevent the Nazi theft of masterworks. It includes some of the best train footage ever shot, as well as a lot of thoughtful commentary (generally on the part of the thieving German general) of art and the importance of beauty.